Egypt plans 100MW solar power plant

Robust growth and a sense of common purpose have allowed seven of the Nile riparian (Egypt and Sudan make up the nine) nations to raise once nonexistent or, at best, barely audible voices. This indicates a notable realignment in the region’s geopolitical center of gravity.

Egypt is miffed by the unusual confidence of historically (pre and post independence) meek states such as Uganda and Kenya, shedding in the process, crocodile tears over how quickly once docile children can turn into pesky brats. Egypt points an accusatory finger at Ethiopia which it perceives as the region’s bad apple, turning almost the whole of east and central Africa against Egypt…

The reason: the dam and Lake Nasser retain the rich Ethiopian top soil as silt, resulting in the degradation of 90% of Egypt’s farmland-land that had been regularly and unfailingly replenished for thousands of years until 1971 when the High Aswan Dam was built despite authoritative advice to the contrary.

Furthermore, Egypt’s population is growing at the rate of 2.5mln a year, adding even more pressure on an overburdened system.

An alert student of geography will quickly tell you that the world’s most slender large nation is Chile, which measures over 4103kms north to south but only between 160 km and 400 km from east to west. But if we were to determine a nation’s shape according to human settlement patterns, Egypt would be the world’s narrowest country.

Over 98% of Egypt’s 81 million people are settled along both sides of the 883 km long Nile Valley. Of Egypt’s 1,001,430 over 950,000 sq km lies outside this barely 30 km wide strip of fertile real estate which amounts to less than half of Djibouti’s total land area of 23,000sq km.

Jan 1 (Reuters) - More than 80 percent of Egyptians will start 2011 with mobile telephones, according to latest official figures which showed cell phone subscriptions grew by nearly a quarter during the year.

A state website said subscriptions as of October were 65.488 million, a rise of more than 12.5 million, or 23.6 percent from a year earlier. Egypt is the Arab world's most populous country, with about 79 million people.

In October 2009, Egypt's three mobile operators -- Etisalat Egypt (ETEL.AD), Mobinil EMOB.CA and Vodafone Egypt (VOD.L) -- had 52.978 million subscribers.